Administration should work for 'civilian surge in Afghanistan through use of aid experts

Published 8:00 pm, Monday, September 7, 2009

By TRUDY RUBIN

The debate is heating up over whether we should send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan if our commanders request them. However, there's virtually no debate over the need for a "civilian surge" in Afghanistan.

Top administration officials -- and the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal -- say they need more American civilian experts to create jobs and improve the lives of Afghans. If we can't "hold and build" after clearing an area, young Afghans will continue to join the Taliban for a paycheck.

So the concept of a civilian surge seems critical to success in Afghanistan. It also fits President Obama's "smart power" strategy, which calls for using all tools at our disposal -- civilian, military, and economic.

Yet it's unclear whether a civilian surge can be ramped up fast enough and used effectively enough to help us succeed. Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst who served as an adviser to McChrystal, believes plans for such a surge are unrealistic.

"The so-called civilian surge won't come close to the minimal requirements," Cordesman said at a Brookings Institution forum last week. "And ... if we can't define better what it means to do the civil side of operations, ... we will continue to alienate the Afghan people rather than secure them and give them a future."

Based on my experience in Afghanistan and my talks with Afghan experts, I believe Cordesman's critique is important. Richard Holbrooke, the special U.S. representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, is leading a vital effort to increase the number of civilian experts in the country. But he is up against two brutal realities: the aftermath of the Bush administration's neglect of postwar Afghanistan, and the urgent need to make progress there now.

The Bush team failed to take advantage of the 2001 victory over the Taliban, expending too little effort on strengthening the weak Afghan government and creating an Afghan army. U.S. aid funds were minimal and misdirected, with a hefty chunk going to foreign contractors. "Most of the aid money has gone outside the country, been wasted," or been used corruptly, Cordesman said.

The Obama team is trying to recover, but it must cope with a U.S. aid bureaucracy that has been denuded of most of its technical expertise and turned into mainly a contracting agency. Holbrooke is trying to recruit a wide variety of civilian experts, especially in agriculture, who are willing to work in war zones. So far, only about one-fourth of the 450 additional civilians expected by year's end have arrived.

Moreover, it's hard for U.S. civilians to operate in violent areas. "You can't have civilians go (into the field) unless there's security," Holbrooke said recently. Yet the need to build up areas that U.S. troops have cleared cannot wait.

As I learned in Afghanistan in May, Afghans are still open to U.S. help but skeptical about projects promised and not delivered. The disputed Afghan presidential election makes it even more essential to channel U.S. aid directly to troubled districts.

"Development aid should immediately reach an area after it has been cleared," Mohammad Ehsan Zia, the respected Afghan minister of reconstruction and rural development, told me. "If you deliver quickly, you get trust. Otherwise, you can't build relationships."

Moreover, as Cordesman notes, there is still a lack of clarity about how to use civilian experts. Zia says aid funds too often get caught up in American and Afghan aid bureaucracies; they should be channeled directly to Afghans for projects they really need. He'd prefer that U.S. experts be used to mentor Afghans, not substitute for them; the immediate goal should be job creation.

U.S. military commanders have emergency funds designated for short-term aid projects, which proved effective in Iraq. Despite the administration's hope to shift aid to civilian control, reality may dictate that the military take the lead in the "build" phase -- at least until Holbrooke figures out how to raise a standing corps of civilians capable of working under gunfire.

"At the end of it, 80 percent of the people doing the civil and aid side of the work will still be in uniform," said Cordesman. Maybe so.

Or maybe the need is for flexibility: to make use of capable aid experts wherever they can be found in the near term, and to devise strategies that get aid to Afghans swiftly by whatever means necessary. "We have lost too many wars in places of this kind to have politically correct rhetoric and delusions," Cordesman said. Amen.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.